David Golder | 
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Product Description
In 1929, 26-year-old Irène Némirovsky shot to fame in France with the publication of her first novel David Golder. At the time, only the most prescient would have predicted the events that led to her extraordinary final novel Suite Française and her death at Auschwitz. Yet the clues are there in this astonishingly mature story of an elderly Jewish businessman who has sold his soul.
Golder is a superb creation. Born into poverty on the Black Sea, he has clawed his way to fabulous wealth by speculating on gold and oil. When the novel opens, he is at work in his magnificent Parisian apartment while his wife and beloved daughter, Joy, spend his money at their villa in Biarritz. But Golder’s security is fragile. For years he has defended his business interests from cut-throat competitors. Now his health is beginning to show the strain. As his body betrays him, so too do his wife and child, leaving him to decide which to pursue: revenge or altruism?
Available for the first time since 1930, David Golder is a page-turningly chilling and brilliant portrait of the frenzied capitalism of the 1920s and a universal parable about the mirage of wealth.
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Customer Reviews:
• Brilliant Debut By Nemirovsky 25 December, 2007
Irene Nemirovsky's brilliant first book (originally published in France in 1929) deals with the eponymous businessman, a ruthless man in his late sixties who has amassed an enormous fortune, but who increasingly faces a brutal reversal of chance. Hated by his wife and daughter (who only expect money from him), with a heart condition that augurs him just a few months of life, his business deals collapsing, he looks at his life and sees that he has never loved anyone, except a daughter that may not be really his. Reportedly autobiographical (Nemirovsky was the estranged daughter of an exiled Russian Jewish banker; she could be the inspiration for Golder's daughter Joyce), what is a bit disturbing about the book is how Golder's greed and the materialism of his wife and daughter are seen as an exclusively Jewish trait; in a post-Holocaust world, this gives the book a strange feeling as if it was written by a very talented antisemite (paradoxically, Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz).
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2SLA0SXRQV8M0
• Anything For Money. 25 January, 2007
I think I read a much older translation of David Golder. I have a feeling the latest translation is better. This book is not easy to find, as are other Nemirovsky translations.
The world we see in this novel is one of money. Although it does bring some initial happiness to poor Golder, it ends up ruining his whole life, his marriage, his businesses, and his relationship to his one and only daughter, Joyce. She loves him only for his money of course, as does Gloria, his wife.
It's easy to see real-life parallels of David Golder in our present world - the upper middle-class, celebrity worship, and the general culture. Highly recommended.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1AC59KYJ25CVD
• Unabashed Greed 06 November, 2007
This is a very short but staggeringly powerful book which made me gasp with its admission of sheer unadulterated greed. David Golder was a Russian immigrant who rose to a place in the financial pages of the world's oil business. He was ruthless, ambitious and completely amoral, married to a grasping woman and father to a spoilt daughter who loved her father only for the money he gave her. It is a desolate read without any love or redeeming features in its characters who worship only money and the privileges it brings. I couldn't feel any sympathy for him, even on his deathbed, so I'm glad that it was such a quick read as it made me feel too depressed with its bleakness and the pervading sense of hopelessness.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2PWUIQG57O1AZ
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